


House of Death

by heeroluva



Category: Torchwood
Genre: Angst, Canonical Character Death, Children of Earth Compliant, Community: slashthedrabble, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-07-09
Updated: 2011-07-09
Packaged: 2017-10-21 04:32:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 500
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/220926
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/heeroluva/pseuds/heeroluva
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ianto lived the life of a ghost and would die the same.</p>
            </blockquote>





	House of Death

**Author's Note:**

> After watching Miracle Day I needed some therapy. Apparently therapy equals angst. Go figure. Written for [](http://slashthedrabble.livejournal.com/profile)[**slashthedrabble**](http://slashthedrabble.livejournal.com/) for the prompt #299: Familiar. All mistakes are mine. Feel free to let me know if you see any. As always feedback is appreciated.

Outside of Torchwood, Ianto Jones simply did not exist. Ianto didn’t realize the ramifications of that when he signed onto Torchwood One. Torchwood was a parasite. It took and took and took until it consumed him, changing him in ways the Cybermen couldn’t even begin to imagine. It didn’t hit home until after the battle of Canary Warf.

Ianto didn’t realize how much he’d lost until it was too late. Too late to care, too late to change, too late to salvage the last scraps of innocence that he’d lost somewhere along the way.

He knew the first instant that he saw Jack that the man would be the death of him whether he was the one pulling the trigger or it happened it a roundabout way. Having betrayed the man from the very beginning, having snuck Lisa in, a cyberman, he knew it was likely the former, he’d fully expected it that night, had begged him for it.

Ianto had called him a monster that day, out of rage and heartbreak, fear and desperation, striking out the only way he could. Jack looked at him with a blank face but wounded eyes. It had been a lie though. To Ianto, Jack was simply a man, not a monster, and not even a hero.

The others hadn’t understood what it had cost Jack to let the faeries take Jasmine, didn’t understand that he hadn’t had a choice. They didn’t understand that not everyone could be saved, that sometimes sacrifices had to be made. Ianto was intimately familiar with that lesson. Given time the others might learn as well.

Time. It was a funny thing, a fickle thing. Time was supposed to be linear, reliable. Time was anything but. It wasn’t on their side. When compared to Jack, Ianto realized how truly insignificant the things they did were. Jack would live tens of millennia, billions of years. It wouldn’t take long for people to forget Torchwood, who they were, what they did. And the most painful thing of all was that he knew Jack would forget them all, despite his denials and promises of the opposite.

Jack had the ability to sweep him off his feet, knock him down, ravish and ruin him and, more often than not, leave him a mess, exhausted and tender and hungry for more all at once. Time. There was never enough of it. As Ianto lay dying in Jack’s arms, he was suddenly hit by how apt the whispered name that other organizations called Torchwood was.

House of Death.

Torchwood was Jack’s House of Death. Ianto had been right. Jack was the death of him, but he didn’t regret any of it. No, actually, he regretted that it wasn’t longer, that they didn’t have more time. He regretted that his death would cause Jack more pain. He lived the life of a ghost and would die the same. Unseen and unknown. Despite it all, he hoped that one day Jack was able to find peace.


End file.
